Football chief Luis Rubiales can kiss career goodbye
A government minister has declared Luis Rubiales ‘cannot run Spanish football again’, as sponsors of the women’s team get jittery and allies abandon him after his World Cup kiss.
The disgraced sports executive Luis Rubiales “cannot run Spanish football again”, a government minister has declared as even his allies have abandoned him after his forced kiss of a female player.
Over the weekend sponsors of the Spanish women’s team distanced themselves from Rubiales as the scandal deepened.
Iberdrola, one of Europe’s biggest energy companies and the team’s main sponsor, said any attitude that “deviates or goes against” the defence of equal rights and the dignity of women “has no place in the world of sport or in society”.
Maria Jesus Montero, an acting minister, pledged yesterday (Sunday) that the government would work to ensure that the suspended football federation president did not return to his job.
Rubiales has faced a week of condemnation after he grabbed the victorious Spanish player Jennifer Hermoso and kissed her on the lips during the World Cup final medal ceremony. He has defied expectations that he would resign over the incident.
“Rubiales cannot run Spanish football again,” Montero said, a day after FIFA provisionally suspended him for 90 days. “The government will work so that Rubiales does not lead Spanish football again.”
The government, which has said it wants the controversy to be Spain’s “#MeToo moment”, cannot sack Rubiales but has strongly denounced his actions and had said it was seeking to get him suspended using a legal procedure before a sport tribunal.
Spain’s football federation has announced that it will meet urgently again today (Monday) “to evaluate the situation in which the federation finds itself”.
The minister’s statement came after allies of Rubiales, 46, criticised his behaviour and protests were held against him, while support for Hermoso received a further boost with players and national media rallying to her.
Jorge Vilda, Spain’s women’s coach, and Luis de la Fuente, the men’s national team manager, were among those who heartily applauded Rubiales at an emergency federation meeting on Friday when he refused to resign, called the kiss “consensual” and “a little peck”, and described demands for him to step down as a “witch-hunt” led by “false feminists” intent on his “social assassination”.
After his suspension they both condemned him. “I deeply regret that the victory of Spanish women’s football has been harmed by the inappropriate behaviour that our until-now president, Luis Rubiales, has carried out and that he himself has acknowledged,” Vilda said.
De la Fuente issued a statement condemning “the actions of Luis Rubiales that did not respect the minimum protocol for such [World Cup] celebrations and are not constructive nor appropriate for someone representing all of Spanish football”.
The pair have not called for Rubiales to resign but the apparent change of heart came after 81 players, including the entire World Cup-winning squad, went on strike and the majority of Vilda’s coaching staff offered to resign.
Hermoso has denied Rubiales’s claim that the kiss was consensual, saying she felt “vulnerable and a victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act”.
Adding to national and international support already expressed for her, Hermoso received an ovation from the crowd when she attended a pre-season match for Atletico Madrid, the club where the 33-year-old forward started her career. Players of Atletico and visitors AC Milan posed before a banner reading “[We Are] With You Jennifer Hermoso.”
Cadiz’s players held up a banner saying “We Are All With Jenni” before their Spanish league match against Almeria, becoming the first men’s team to make a public statement in support of Hermoso. Sevilla men’s players wore warm-up T-shirts with the hashtag #SeAcabo ("it’s over") written on the front, a phrase that several Spanish women’s players and Hermoso have used on social media and in statements, apparently referring to Rubiales’s reign in Spain.
Demonstrations were staged by feminist groups in cities including Madrid and Salamanca at the weekend, calling for Rubiales to go, with more due today (Monday) in the capital.
The front page headline of El Pais on Sunday declared that “Spain no longer tolerated cases like Rubiales”.
“The feminist movement, after decades highlighting inequalities and sexist behaviour, has permeated a society that reacts almost unanimously against attitudes such as that of the already suspended president,” the newspaper said.
Rubiales, who has said that he will use the law to defend himself, remains a vice-president of UEFA, with a $401,000 salary.
The Times
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